This invention relates to a mechanism for precisely positioning a device along a linear path, and more particularly to such a mechanism for supporting an optical device such as an optical character recognition read head in such manner as to be conveniently and easily positioned along a linear path having optical relation to the plane in which are located the characters to be read.
Optical systems often require a support arrangement for adjustably positioning optical devices in precise manner along a predetermined linear path. For example, in an optical character recognition system, an optical read head such as a video camera is supported to focus upon the optical characters which are situated in the object plane of the optical system. It is advantageous, as well, to be able to position the optical character recognition read head to focus upon a particular location in the object plane, such as a specific place along a line of print or a particular print line in a series of print lines, or to assure that a full character is centered within the read head's field of vision